Wasn’t it originally a huge public undertaking? It was my understanding that the rails and CN began their lives in public ownership before being privatized.
The railways were built privately for the most part, and eventually most of them defaulted on loans and became CN. Which I guess was public for a long time, but competed with a number of private operators still like CP. Via was a heavily subsidized passenger crown corp because nobody could make passenger service profitable.
Ugh. Why did we ever privatize rail. People would riot if we privatized the highway network, and yet…
Because the rails were there before Canada!
When were the railways ever not private in Canada? One barely solvent passenger service that’s a crown corp hardly constituted nationalized rail.
Wasn’t it originally a huge public undertaking? It was my understanding that the rails and CN began their lives in public ownership before being privatized.
Did I misunderstand things?
The railways were built privately for the most part, and eventually most of them defaulted on loans and became CN. Which I guess was public for a long time, but competed with a number of private operators still like CP. Via was a heavily subsidized passenger crown corp because nobody could make passenger service profitable.